


a discovery of foreign lands

by statusquo_ergo



Series: a fire in the sage's mansion [10]
Category: Suits (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Inspired by Princess Diaries, M/M, Mike goes to Harvard, Season/Series 02, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-13 03:09:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19242607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/statusquo_ergo/pseuds/statusquo_ergo
Summary: This is an awful lot to spring on a guy without any warning.Well, at least the presents are nice.





	a discovery of foreign lands

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: last minute request then... I hope tumblr won't eat it : Royalty AU. a Little like Princess Diary but Mike found out after he was hired by Harvey. It would be on his mother side, we don't know who her parents are. That would give him immunity for the fraud meaning he could go back to college and study law, and more importantly he could woo Harvey. He refused before, Harvey being his boss and all.
> 
> Suits Bingo prompt: Royal Wedding AU

Let it be known that, as far as Harvey is concerned, nothing in the world quite measures up to a quiet evening at home.

Sure, he loves his high-end lifestyle; he loves showing off at cocktail parties, cozying up to new clients and snatching them out from under Louis’s nose, enticing women back to his place without the slightest hint of pretense and never speaking to them again once they’re out the door the next morning. But sitting here on a Friday night, tucked into his soft leather club chair in front of a roaring fire, a glass of Scotch cradled in his hand as a barely-there hum of jazz fills the air, he’s hard pressed to think of anywhere else he’d rather be.

_Bang bang bang bang bang._

Of fucking course.

Heaving a world-weary sigh to an audience of precisely no one, Harvey sets down his Scotch, hauls himself out of his enormously comfortable chair, and stalks to the front door with every intention of telling Donna or Louis or whoever to fuck right off until Monday.

Mike, on the other hand, never has been much of one to take him at his word when it doesn’t suit him.

“Harvey,” he says, shifting his weight from side to side and staring up with unnaturally wide eyes that somehow do _just_ enough to keep Harvey from throwing him out on his ass.

“How much is this gonna cost me?” Harvey asks dryly as Mike fidgets with his hands.

“What?” he fumbles. “Nothing, this isn’t— Uh, it’s not that kind of problem.”

Harvey arches his eyebrows, and Mike sets his jaw on a terse sigh.

“Look, can I come in?”

Casting a forlorn glance back at his nest, the poor Scotch abandoned on the coffee table, Harvey steps back to make way for Mike’s entrance, wondering what exactly could’ve gotten him so rattled and doing his best not to leap to the obvious conclusion that someone’s found them out already.

“Okay,” Mike begins, leaning back against the kitchen island and looking seemingly everywhere but at Harvey himself. “So you know how we’re committing fraud?”

What an auspicious start to this conversation.

“So should I save myself the trouble and just start drafting an appeal now for your first court case?” Harvey asks as Mike presses his lips together and narrows his eyes.

“I was going to say that I think I might have a way around it.”

“Around it?” Harvey repeats. “I’m pretty sure we’re in a little too deep to pretend it isn’t happening.”

“ _No._ ” Mike looks at him imploringly. “Around the part where it’s _illegal._ ”

Harvey frowns. Mike is still pretty newly-minted, as far as his lawyerly tenure is concerned, but surely he isn’t so naïve as all that. “Unless you’ve found a way to rewrite about eighty years’ worth of legislation in the last four hours,” he warns, “I think you might be barking up the wrong tree here.”

“Will you just _listen_ to me?”

“Will you make your _point_ already?”

Taking a deep breath, Mike sets his shoulders back and stands up straight.

“Sovereign immunity.”

Harvey gapes dumbly for a moment.

“ _What?_ ”

“Seriously,” Mike rambles, “sovereign immunity, immunity from jurisdiction or adjudication, I can’t be the subject of any court proceedings. And even if someone tries to charge me, even if I’m _convicted,_ the punishment can’t be enforced. It’s perfect.”

Harvey sinks his weight into his right leg, furrowing his brow and sticking his hands into his pants pockets. “Unless you’re about to marry into some royal family I don’t know about,” he hedges, “I think you might be overlooking one tiny little detail here.”

Biting his lip, Mike darts his gaze away nervously, and Harvey’s stomach clenches in a nauseating sort of way.

“You aren’t.”

Mike shrugs his shoulders up to his ears.

“Not…exactly…”

Harvey takes a step toward him. “But…”

“But, it turns out…”

Mike trails off, and Harvey takes another step forward.

“Mike?”

Mike looks at a spot somewhere above Harvey’s head.

“As it turns out, I am the…heir apparent of a…small sovereign nation?”

For a minute, Harvey just stares.

Of all the possible directions he imagined this conversation might take, that is…not one of them.

“You,” he says once he’s gotten his feet back under him, “are…a prince. _You._ And _no_ one has thought to bring this up to you before now.”

“I guess they figured I didn’t need to know.” Mike waves his hand in a vaguely all-encompassing gesture. “The queen is my mom’s mother— Or, she was, the queen, but apparently she died a little while ago, and my mom’s sister had some kidney disease or something when she was younger that they just found out left her infertile, so she and her husband can’t have kids, and if they adopted, the kid would be an illegitimate heir, and the monarchy would collapse when they died, but even though my mom basically abdicated the throne when she married my dad and moved to America, she’s still part of the bloodline, and I’m her only son, so…”

Mike looks at him with a shy little grin on his stupid face and Harvey nods along with the story as though anything about any of this makes even the slightest bit of sense.

“Um.”

Harvey keeps nodding, his mind moving in fits and starts punctuated by extended periods of dead silence.

“So anyway.”

“Couch.”

Mike blinks. “What?”

“The couch,” Harvey says, pointing to his left. “You. Sleep on the couch. We’ll talk about this tomorrow.”

Mike takes an uncertain step to his right. “You, uh… You don’t have a guest room?”

“ _Mike._ ”

“Yeah, yep, I’m going.”

\---

Morning arrives all too soon for Harvey’s liking, and no matter how many times he squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head, Mike is still lounging on the couch in his undershirt and borrowed sweats, waiting to have the conversation that Harvey has a sneaking suspicion is going to eat up the rest of his weekend, if not his entire career.

Shuffling into the kitchen, he surveys his limited options. Toast, orange juice, eggs; would he be better off going out for something heartier and more fortifying, or settling for something light and unlikely to make him throw up if one more batshit crazy thing happens today?

Well, caffeine has never steered him wrong before.

“Alright,” he says, pouring as much black coffee as will fit into the biggest mug he owns as Mike fixes himself a bowl of cereal like he owns the place. “This country you’re gonna be heading up. What do you know about it?”

“Alinotho.” Mike sits down at the island with his breakfast and reaches into the drying rack for a spoon. “It’s a principality in Europe about the size of Lichtenstein, they seem to be pretty internationally insignificant.”

Harvey frowns. “They have a stable economy?”

Mike waves his spoon in Harvey’s direction. “They’re super industrialized. You know those hyper-efficient cities you see in _The Matrix_? Or _The Jetsons_?”

“And they haven’t thought to export _that?_ ”

“No, but,” Mike swallows a bite of cereal, “I’m pretty sure it only works because they’re so small. The population is about twenty thousand, but whatever they’re exporting, they seem to have pretty stable trade relations with the EU.”

Closing his eyes, Harvey takes a long drink of coffee.

“I’m too old for this shit.”

“Ten more years of this,” Mike fires back at once. Harvey glares at him, and his smile fades as the farcical pretense drops away.

“Okay, so, for real.” Mike looks up with that stubborn determination in his eyes that Harvey’s come to know far too well over their year and change of acquaintance. “What do I do?”

What a question. Raising his mug to his lips, Harvey ponders what the reasonable answer is, or ought to be; for all his life experience, all the hardships he’s endured and the stupid things he’s done, Mike has never really had the chance to grow up properly, skipping around from orphaned child to anguished teenager and penny-ante delinquent without accumulating any of the maturity those years are meant to impart. He can stand on his own two feet, of course, but for all of this to come his way _now,_ just when things are really starting to come together for him… It’s a potential solution to his biggest problem, sure, but with some pretty incredible strings attached and not much to fall back on if it all goes to shit.

Well. Harvey’s not about to stand for _that._

Hoping he hasn’t begun to look too doe-eyed at the realization, Harvey sets his mug down on the counter and crosses his arms.

“You’re sure this is legit?”

Mike frowns. “I think so; the people I talked to had all kinds of official documentation, and information about my mom, and I googled Alinotho, it’s a real place. Besides,” he reasons, pushing his mostly-empty cereal bowl aside, “isn’t this a pretty stupid thing to lie about? If it’s not true, what do they think they’re going to get out of me?”

“Mm.” Fair enough. Dropping his arms, Harvey picks his mug back up and narrows his eyes. “Any idea why this didn’t come up when your grandmother’s nursing bills started piling up?”

Mike’s expression sours as he drums his fingers irritably against the countertop. “Grammy probably didn’t know. I don’t know if my parents ever even planned on telling her; I mean, why would they, it’s not like my mom was ever going back.”

Harvey nods. Technological advancements notwithstanding, how much money does a diminutive economy in a country half the size of Nantucket have to throw around, anyway?

“So,” he says coolly. “What do they want from you?”

Mike thins his lips and rests his arms on the counter. “Eventually, they want me to take the throne,” he says, an obvious enough conclusion. “Right now, they want me to start preparing for the inevitable. None of the—fluff crap,” he clarifies, “I mean things like actual governance. And speeches and presentation and all that other stuff. I have to learn the history of the country, the economics, the customs, social mores, arts and literature and culture. And I guess it doesn’t look great when the king is a college dropout, so they want me to get a degree.”

Harvey murmurs under his breath; that actually sounds pretty reasonable, all things considered. “A degree in what?”

Mike looks up at the ceiling. “I dunno, probably international relations or something.”

“How about law?”

Jerking his head back down, Mike narrows his eyes and hunches his shoulders. “You think I can convince them to fund my law degree?”

“Is this place a democracy?” Harvey asks. At Mike’s nod, he shrugs as though the answer is a given. “Why not? You get your concentration in International and Comparative Law, you’re in a great place to move onto the world stage if the country ever needs to expand its reach, and in the meantime, maybe you’ll learn some things you can introduce when you come to power.”

“When I come to power,” Mike marvels. “I still can’t believe this is happening to me.”

Harvey tips his mug in his direction, nodding as though he isn’t at least twice as incredulous and probably about ten times as stunned. “Get used to it, rookie.”

Mike smiles weakly.

“I’ll try.”

\---

Harvey really ought to know by now that “I’ll try,” in the official Michael James Ross lexicon, is merely a gentle synonym for “I will.” He isn’t entirely convinced that the conversation with the National Council went quite as smoothly as Mike claims, but however he swayed them, things seem to have ended up more or less as he wanted; to be fair, their desperation and lack of alternatives may have had more to do with the outcome than Mike’s innate persuasion skills, but this isn’t really the time to split hairs.

For all their acquiescence to Mike’s insistence on attending Harvard—his admission thanks at least as much to Harvey’s faculty connections as to Mike’s new royal status, thank you very much—the monarchy refused to budge on Mike’s official diplomatic training, and it’s not that Harvey thinks Mike will slack off on his legal coursework so much as that _someone_ has to make sure he’s keeping on top of these things. Weekly Skype calls are basically a requirement.

“So how are you liking Legal Research and Writing?” he asks one such afternoon.

Glowering, Mike leans back in his chair and tilts his monitor to show off the stacks of books and papers spread across his desk. “Fuck. Research.”

Harvey smirks. “I wouldn’t think that kind of language becoming of a member of the royal family.”

“This is the most boring class in the _world!_ ”

“We all had to get through it, you’ll live.”

Mike rolls his eyes melodramatically. “Yeah but I’ve been working for you for over a _year._ Literally every single thing they’re asking me to do, I’ve already done it about fifty times.”

“So what’s the problem, this should be a cakewalk for you.”

“I can’t just place out of it?”

Harvey drums his fingers against his desk and arches his eyebrows; he’s learned how to play this little game by now.

“You know Kyle Durant only earned one High Pass in his entire LRW course?”

Mike snorts. “I’m shocked.”

“How many papers have you written so far?”

“Three.”

“And how many High Passes have you gotten?”

Mike scowls. “Two.”

“Uh huh.” Harvey sets his hands on his chair’s armrests. “So you’re planning on coming out of this course only one grade higher than Kyle Durant.”

“You know, I’m pretty sure senior partners aren’t supposed to be sowing this kind of discord among their associates.”

Harvey shrugs the point off. “I have to do something to keep these kids in line; I put him on a case last week, he spent so much time bragging to the rest of the pool it’s a miracle he got anything done.”

“I told you to use Letitia.”

“Wish I could. Jessica took her.”

Knitting his fingers together, Mike rests his elbows on his desk and leans forward with a concentrated furrow in his brow. “What about Seung-il?”

To his credit, Harvey only spends about three seconds pretending to know enough of the non-Mike associates to have the slightest clue who he’s talking about. “I couldn’t tell you.”

Mike shakes his head. “Ask Donna. I think he’s some kind of numbers prodigy, but if Louis hasn’t grabbed him by now, you really should. He’s a real stickler for detail, I bet he can handle anything you have to throw at him.”

“Mm-hm,” Harvey murmurs, scribbling the name down in the corner of a tediously dull brief gathering dust next to his computer. “So how’s the training going, Your Highness?”

“Ha, ha,” Mike grouses. “It’s almost as dumb as this class. You know I have an approved reading list? And posture lessons? Literally, entire lessons on improving my posture. And which way to pass the salad.”

“And which way is that?”

“To the right, smart guy.”

Harvey grins. “You need anything?”

“Oh, I dunno,” Mike muses, stretching his arms up over his head. “A day off, a good night’s sleep. A royal consort.”

“Goodbye, Mike.”

“You asked!”

\---

The most reasonable explanation for all of this, Harvey decides, is that the pressures of his royal lineage have driven Mike categorically insane.

A second, somewhat more juvenile explanation is that Mike is petulantly throwing away his new GDP over some perceived slight by his handlers, but Harvey dismisses that one on the grounds that Mike isn’t completely stupid.

So has Mike gone off the deep end already, Harvey ponders as he circles his brand new, state-of-the-art entertainment system, complete with a massive flat screen, vintage record player, and pretty much every console system currently on the market; or is it possible that Alinotho really does have these kinds of liquid assets to throw around and Mike is just doing what he pleases with what he’s been given? But even if that’s the case, how can Mike possibly rationalize spending what has to be thousands in government funding on a swath of gifts for a civilian like Harvey? And on something as frivolous as this, no less. A life-saving operation, maybe he could understand, but all this extravagance would be difficult for even the least scrupulous moneylender to justify with a straight face.

There's really only one thing to do.

“Hey Harvey.”

“What the hell did you do?”

For a second, Harvey wonders if he should’ve made the call on Skype for the additional weight of visual aids, but Mike seems to do fine without them, chuckling smugly at Harvey’s bewilderment.

“Are you having connectivity issues?”

Harvey scowls. “Mike, come on.”

“Did you try putting it on channel three?”

“ _Mike._ ”

Mike laughs again. “Come on, it’s a present! The PS3 even has Madden 12. Or did you forget how to have fun after I left?”

Rolling his eyes, Harvey drops down on the couch across from his new TV. To be fair, it is a very nice piece of equipment, and whoever did the installation did a great job of avoiding the glare piercing through his many, many windows.

“Seriously,” he presses. “Why?”

“Why what, why you?”

“Among other things.”

Mike sighs, and Harvey gets the funny feeling that he’s nervous about something.

“After everything you’ve done for me,” he says eventually, “this seemed like a start.”

Harvey blinks owlishly at nothing in particular. “At what, paying me back?”

“No,” Mike stutters, “no, at… At showing you how much I appreciate it. How— You. How much it means to me. Everything you’ve given me.”

Well, there is that, but Mike has earned his keep and then some; his work digging up dirt on Travis Tanner more than made up for the shit at the Harvard Club, and that’s just the first example that comes to mind. And sure, Harvey doesn’t go out of his way to remind Mike of his worth at every goddamn opportunity, but the kid’s gotta know, doesn’t he? Harvey’s kept him around this long, after all.

But that’s the thing, isn’t it? Harvey digs his fingers restlessly into the couch cushions and bites the side of his tongue as his thoughts begin to take form. Mike _does_ go out of his way to show people how much he cares about them, and Harvey’s willing to bet it’s been a habit of his since long before they ever met. A poor kid from Queens might have resorted to all kinds of things to drive his point home, and there’s no telling what he might have made do with, but to suddenly be pulling in a six-figure salary, and with basically zero supervision…

“You know,” Harvey says carefully, “you pay me with the quality of your work.”

Mike huffs a put-upon little laugh. “You think I’m trying to buy your friendship?”

“Are you?”

“No!” Mike sucks air in through his teeth. “Maybe a little. But not on purpose.”

Harvey smiles. “Not that I don’t appreciate the gesture.”

“So you’re saying there’s hope.”

Picking up a nearby Xbox 360 controller, Harvey quirks his eyebrows at the odd rejoinder. “That depends on what you’re hoping for.”

Mike hums. “There’s NBA 2K12 if you get tired of Madden.”

“You didn’t forget anything, did you?”

“Or there’s always Wii Sports.”

“You son of a bitch.”

Mike laughs brightly. “Enjoy your present, Harvey.”

Harvey smiles again. It’s nice to see Mike settling into all this so well; he deserves a break, after— Well, after everything.

“Just make sure you’re getting all your homework in on time.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

As they bid their fond farewells, Harvey settles back into the couch cushions to survey his new bounty. With so many options, deciding how to waste away the rest of the night is actually kind of difficult, but considering the lateness of the hour, he’d probably do well to avoid anything requiring too much hand-eye coordination in favor of watching some regular old television.

Only as the familiar opening shots of _The Rainmaker_ begin to play does it occur to him that Mike never did clarify what it is he’s hoping for.

Oh, well. It’s probably nothing.

\---

“Mike, what the hell.”

“Not a fan of tradition?”

“This isn’t tradition, this is— This is three dozen roses taking up half the real estate on my desk.”

“Happy Valentine’s!”

“I think they’re going to fall over and incapacitate me.”

“Look, if you don’t like them, you can always give them to Donna.”

“I might just do that, smartass.”

“Just try not to think about how sad it’ll make me.”

“Hadn’t even crossed my mind.”

“How disappointed.”

“Uh huh.”

“All alone here, at law school, all by myself, just trying to make you proud.”

“You and your royal entourage.”

“Just trying to do something _nice._ ”

“Yeah, I hadn’t gotten that from the Scotch and the records and the _Book of Mormon_ tickets.”

“I don’t know why I even bother.”

“Mike.”

“What.”

Cradling one of the crimson buds, Harvey smiles affectionately.

“Thank you.”

Mike exhales on a low whistle.

“You’re welcome, Harvey.”

\---

“Happy birthday,” Donna greets him first thing as Harvey arrives at the office. “Tell me about your secret admirer.”

“I figured I’d be the one making unreasonable demands today,” he says distractedly, setting his briefcase down on his desk beside a bright silver box adorned with probably the biggest and most glitter-infused blue ribbon he’s ever seen in real life. “Where’d this come from?”

“Secret. Admirer,” she repeats, trailing in after him. “Who is it? Oh,” she interrupts herself, “don’t tell me. Scottie.”

Harvey picks up the card tucked in under the bow and flips it open. “I don’t have a secret admirer,” he assures her, flashing the card in her direction. “It’s from Mike.”

If Donna’s enormously skeptical scowl is anything to go by, the point he’s convinced her of isn’t exactly the one he intended.

“Harvey,” she says as he tears the paper off of a new HP EliteBook laptop. “The last guy who sent me as many presents as Mike has sent you since he left was Mark Meadows.”

“Huh,” he panders as he opens the box. “It’s almost as though today’s my birthday.”

“So you’re telling me someone else sent the Nets tickets?” she presses. “And the Valentine’s candy?”

“That was flowers,” he says, lifting the laptop up to inspect his new toy from different angles.

“So it _was_ him!”

“This is different. Mark was trying to get you to go out with him.”

Donna glares at him balefully. “That’s kinda my point, Harvey.”

Opening his mouth to mount a retort, Harvey barely manages to choke out the word “You,” as in “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” before his eye snags on the limited edition Cabernet Elder wood barrel pen on display next to the signed Derek Jeter baseball, and he suddenly feels a lot less sure of himself.

Alright, yes, Mike has sent him a lot of gifts since he shipped off to Harvard. But that’s just him having fun with his new wealth and status, that’s just him taking advantage of the new sandbox he’s been given to play in. He’s trying to show Harvey how much he appreciates him, he said, he’s trying to repay him for all he’s done. With…liquor. And flowers. And rare collectibles.

Well, shit.

Smiling her most patronizing smile, Donna strokes her hand up and down his arm.

“There you go.”

So…that’s that.

Okay then.

\---

He’ll ask him about it, that’s what he’ll do. The next time Mike calls, the next time they talk, he’ll just ask him, flat out. No hemming and hawing, no lawyerly double talk, no skirting the issue; plain, simple language, a straightforward question. That’s exactly what he’ll do.

His phone rings a little after one, Mike’s name popping up on the display, and Harvey takes a deep breath.

“Mike.”

“Hey, Harvey, can I ask you a question?”

Doing his level best not to start stammering like a drunken fool, Harvey presses his lips together and clenches his free hand into a fist.

“Sure.”

Mike sighs loudly, and Harvey hopes very much that he isn’t about to try to make a joke out of any of this.

“I can do this, right?”

Okay. Okay, good. Not a joke, then. That’s good.

Harvey thinks about telling Mike that he’ll be fine. He thinks about telling Mike that he has everything he needs in his tenacity, in his intelligence and his passion. He thinks about telling Mike that his royal handlers will never let anything happen to him, that they’ll do all they can to keep him safe and teach him everything he needs to know to get the job done. To serve his country, serve his people.

Fulfill his duties.

Huh.

“What,” he asks, “did someone say you couldn’t?”

It’s not the most sensitive opener, but Mike laughs anyway, and Harvey figures he’s doing okay.

“Even if they think it, I’m pretty sure no one would risk speaking it into existence.”

Leaning back in his chair, Harvey raises his hand to the back of his head. “So what’s up?”

Mike makes an ungainly sort of snorting noise that reminds Harvey of nothing so much as a particularly vexed horse. “What do you think?”

“I don’t think people who have been in your position are still allowed to have imposter syndrome.”

“It’s weird how being an actual imposter is not the magical cure that we were promised by our most reverent forefathers.”

Harvey smirks. “That’s all that’s bothering you?”

Taking another breath, Mike forces the question out like he had to build up the nerve to ask it in the first place:

“What if I suck?”

Okay. Here we go.

“You might,” Harvey says, because there’s no point in pretending otherwise.

“Wow,” Mike deadpans, “I’m so glad I decided to call you about this.”

“You know you might,” Harvey challenges. “But you know what else, you weren’t so great when you first started here, and look at you now. You think you’d be able to handle your royalty lessons on top of your law classes if you weren’t already a pretty damn good lawyer?”

Mike murmurs a contemplative sound, and Harvey’d like to think he’s starting to find the silver lining in all this.

“You learn fast and you know how to ask for help when you need it,” he says. “You’ve got a whole team of people behind you whose entire job is to make sure you know what you’re doing. You’re in this for the right reasons, you’ll get where you need to go.”

Mike sighs, his shoulders thumping against the wall over the sound of blankets being disturbed as he nestles into his bed.

“I know,” he admits. “I mean I know they’d never let me fuck this up too badly. But it’s— It’s kind of lonely, you know?”

Transported suddenly back to his own time at Harvard, Harvey’s chest tightens with the memory of the long nights, the vicious competition; the quiet thrum of stress and tension that always seemed to pulse through the campus, under every floorboard and down every hall. And him, with his luxury of an utter lack of fear for the future, his conceited disregard for the quality of his work and his tedious assumption that he would always be good enough; Mike, with the weight of so much on his shoulders, so many expectations and needs and unanswered questions, must be feeling everything a hundred times as strongly.

“I know.” Harvey moves his phone from one hand to the other and lays his arm across his stomach. “But you’ve got your whole entourage behind you, and I know you’re gonna do the best you can.”

“I got into this business so I wouldn’t have to work,” Mike quips, and Harvey has to admit he set him up pretty neatly for that one.

“Like hell you did,” he retorts. “Mike, you’re gonna be fine and you know it.”

“Am I?”

“Of course you are. You’ve got me.”

Oh, yeah, that was smooth. Harvey pinches the bridge of his nose and tries not to think too hard about how very much that was the exact opposite of what he planned to say at the start of the conversation.

On the other hand, Mike hasn’t told him to go to hell, so that’s good. Nor has he laughed him right off the line, which is…also good.

Isn’t it? Harvey doesn’t want Mike to get the wrong impression about his intentions. But if all those gifts and things _are_ supposed to be some kind of long-distance courtship ritual, he isn’t… _not_ interested. Is he? Well, Mike is hardly his subordinate anymore, so there’s no real conflict of interest.

So…what comes next?

Mike hums again, and there’s another sound like shifting bedsheets as he lies down on top of the covers.

“Thanks, Harvey.”

Harvey sags down in his chair and clears his throat.

“You’re welcome, Mike.”

As if he doesn’t know.

\---

“Good evening, Harvey,” Donna says brightly. “Are you aware that we parted company not two hours ago and the time is currently eleven thirty PM?”

“I need a train ticket to Boston.”

“And I need eight hours of beauty sleep, what’s your point?”

“If you’re not gonna buy it for me, consider this your warning that I’m not going to be in the office tomorrow,” Harvey says distractedly as he attempts to split his attention between their conversation and the New York to Boston schedule on Amtrak’s website. “Mike gave me a car.”

“He doesn’t think you have enough options at the club?”

“It’s a Mustang model kit, it probably cost him about thirty bucks.”

“My, my, the absolute _nerve._ ”

“ _Donna._ ”

“ _Harvey._ ”

Heaving a weary sigh, Harvey reaches up to massage his slowly aching forehead as Donna clicks her tongue sympathetically.

“Your life’s about to get a lot more complicated, you know that?”

His mouse hovers waveringly over the “Add to cart” button.

“Yeah.”

“Hey Harvey?”

_Your ticket is on its way._

“Yeah?”

_This may take a few hours._

“I’m really happy for you.”

_Your tickets are booked._

He opens his inbox and clicks “Refresh.”

“Yeah.”

\---

The pressure in the air is close to suffocating, the exact opposite of the sort of tranquility and peace of mind a person in an enormously stressful situation usually needs to perform their best. Every which way he looks, someone scurries about with their nose buried in a book, or stacks of paper clutched in their arms, or a frantic expression on their face as they press a cell phone to their ear and nod along robotically to some probably terrible news. One girl, talking on one phone as she scrolls through a second, nearly trips over another, lying under a tree and scribbling frantically on a notepad, and by some dismal sort of mutual understanding, they apologize to one another and get back to work as though nothing’s happened at all.

That’s finals season for you, Harvey thinks pityingly as he walks along the curving road between Hastings and Griswold. Then, with a little snicker: Mike is probably having the time of his life.

A young man pacing the yard glares at his amusement; Harvey raises his hand, and the guy raises his middle finger.

That’s about right.

As he mills about the campus, it occurs to Harvey with strangely little disquiet that now that he’s here, he doesn’t exactly have a plan for what to _do._ He ought to find Mike, probably; that does seem like the logical thing, the obvious thing, but as for how to do that, or what to say once he’s done it—

“Harvey?”

Yeah, he should’ve seen that coming.

Mike trots up to him with that stupid seatbelt-buckle messenger bag slung across his chest, his mouth twitching with the beginnings of a smile he’s not yet entirely sure he’s permitted. An imposing fellow in a stiff suit and dark sunglasses walks a bit of a distance behind him; secret service, or whatever the Alinothovian equivalent is. It’s nice to know they’re taking Mike’s safety seriously. The guy looks to be perfectly capable at his job, and he’s probably perfectly friendly, and Harvey decides to ignore him completely.

“Is this a bad time?” Harvey asks, sticking his hands into his pockets and kicking his heel against the pavement.

“Not even sort of,” Mike says, hiking the strap of his bag up higher on his shoulder. “What’re you doing here?”

For all the intensity and fervor pounding in his veins last night as he bought the ticket, all their phone conversations and Skype calls and ragtag emails and texts, Harvey finds himself oddly lost for words with Mike standing right before him. Is this really what he wants? Really? Is this really what _Mike_ wants? Is he sure? Is he _really_ sure?

But Mike is quickly losing the fight to keep his smile down, looking up at Harvey like he hung the moon just by showing up here, barely two weeks before Mike is due to come back to New York for summer break, and none of those are real questions.

“I heard you’re in the market for a royal consort,” he says, squinting a little against a sudden glare peeking over the very top of Langdell Hall.

Mike’s expression freezes in an awkward middle ground between ecstasy and terror, and he steps one foot forward as he moves the other a few inches back.

“What?”

“I might be wrong,” Harvey says indifferently. “Come to think of it, it was awhile ago now; I can go back to the city, I’ll see you when you come back to work.”

“I—” Mike shakes his head, lining his feet back up. “Are you kidding?”

“You want me to get down on bended knee?” Harvey asks as his nerve begins to waver, just a little. “Sorry I don’t have a ring, this was kind of a spur-of-the-moment decision.”

“No,” Mike stutters, “no, I just…didn’t see this coming.”

Harvey nods. “Well,” he says, doing his best to brace himself for anything and everything, “it’s here now. So what do you say?”

Slowly, Mike’s shock ebbs away; slowly, his smile begins to grow, reaching all the way up to his eyes.

“Was it the car?”

Harvey laughs tersely. “Yes, Mike, it was the car. It was the thirty dollars you spent at the hobby shop that convinced me to accept that half-assed proposal you made eight months ago.”

Mike laughs too, a little brighter, and Harvey shakes his head.

“Come on, rookie.” Reaching out, he sets his hand on Mike’s shoulder, his thumb pressed up against his jawline. “It’s you.”

His eyes softening, Mike leans into Harvey’s hand.

“How do you feel about long engagements?”

Harvey shrugs, rubbing his thumb along Mike’s chin. “It’s all politics.”

Mike nods.

“You know how it is.”

Leaning in, Harvey presses his smiling lips to Mike’s as Mike grabs onto his arms and pulls him in close, and try as he might, Harvey can’t think of anyplace he would rather be just now.

In all fairness, he doesn’t try very hard.

**Author's Note:**

> Alinotho is not a real place, nor, as far as I know, is it a real fictional place; it’s a word I pulled from a generator of words that sound like they’re from Lovecraft novels.
> 
> The [population of Lichtenstein](https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/liechtenstein-population/) in 2010 was approximately 36,003.
> 
> “Ten more years of this!”  
> “I’m too old for this shit.”  
> —Roger and Riggs, _Lethal Weapon 3_ (1992)
> 
> “You’re gonna have to work for it.”  
> “I got into this business so I wouldn’t have to work.”  
> —Justine and Vince, _Entourage_ , “Date Night” (s01e04)


End file.
